International News

Bolivia arrests top prosecutor and 13 others accused by US of protecting drug traffickers

AP Photo/Juan Karita

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- Bolivian police arrested the country's top prosecutor and 13 others accused of protecting drug traffickers, the government said Thursday, days after the Trump administration imposed visa restrictions on the attorney general and several senior officials over corruption allegations.

The arrest of Bolivian Attorney General Roger Mariaca, appointed to a six-year term in 2024 under Bolivia's previous socialist government, comes as conservative President Rodrigo Paz deepens security cooperation with Washington. U.S. Secretary State Marco Rubio hailed the arrests as "bold and decisive actions to combat narco-trafficking, systemic corruption, and transnational organized crime in Bolivia."

Mariaca did not immediately comment on his arrest but had earlier denounced U.S. accusations that he accepted bribes to facilitate drug trafficking as political pressure on his office. Anti-drug prosecutor Miguel Gonzales said late Wednesday that police had detained Mariaca without a warrant.

"We have dismantled a criminal organization entrenched in the justice system," Interior Minister Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters Thursday, adding that Mariaca would face charges of money laundering and drug trafficking.

Authorities detained but swiftly released suspected Uruguayan drug kingpin Sebastián Marset in 2023, when Mariaca was chief prosecutor in the eastern region of Santa Cruz, Oviedo said. "They let him go, and not only that, they returned his seized assets," he said of the longtime fugitive trafficker. Marset was ultimately captured in Bolivia last March and sent to the U.S. to face money laundering charges.

Oviedo also alleged that bundles of cash seized from an ambulance leaving Mariaca's home in the city of Santa Cruz early Thursday were proceeds of extortion targeting people who sought help from prosecutors. Prosecutor Daniel Ortuño said officers found 3.53 million bolivianos (about $294,000) and an additional $10,000 in the vehicle.

The other detainees included two prosecutors also targeted by this week's U.S. visa sanctions, part of a broader round of travel bans affecting over a dozen officials across South America.

The State Department cast Monday's measures as support for the Shield of the Americas, the Trump administration's security alliance with mostly conservative governments in the region, including Bolivia, to fight organized crime. The restrictions marked the latest instance of Washington using U.S. visas to pressure critics and officials whose actions conflict with its priorities in Latin America.

Urging lawmakers to overhaul the justice system, Oviedo warned officials against cooperating with criminal groups.

"Either you stand with the law ... or you stand with crime, with narcoterrorism," he said.

Paz took office last November, ending nearly two decades of dominance by the Movement Toward Socialism party of former President Evo Morales. He has warmed ties with Washington and resumed cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which Morales expelled along with the U.S. ambassador in 2008, accusing them of seeking to overthrow his government.